The jobs that my husband and I work pin us down through the holidays. His family is too far away to pull off traveling to be with them for Thanksgiving and Christmas, so this year we did Thanksgiving in October, apparently in the week of Canadian Thanksgiving (happy coincidence). I was amazed at the feelings that the food on the table evoked. Making Thanksgiving a month early made me thankful for the time we were all able to spend together.

So what was on the table? A surprisingly low carb meal. We made a roast turkey, creamy pumpkin pie, sage browed butter sweet potatoes and snappy lemony green beans. The pumpkin pie can be done a day or two ahead, or in the morning if you have a split oven, in the morning while the turkey is going too. The turkey, depending on how big, will take about 20 minutes per pound to cook, so budget time accordingly. Finally, the prep work for the sweet potatoes and green beans should in advance, but the cook time on the potatoes only takes about 25 minutes, and its 2 minutes for the beans. Oh, and there’s some gravy that was previously prepared and some vino in the middle.